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—EXCERPT FROM THE MAJOR ARCANA: A TREATISE ON THE HISTORY OF THE OLD GODS

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

MY THOUGHTS ARE hazy and strange. It feels like I’ve spent my life as a rat in the truest sense of the word, scurrying from perceived safety to perceived safety but none of it is real. There’s only the danger at my back, breathing down my neck.

If I were alone, I’d already be lost. Being escorted out after the Culling was an assault on my senses at the time, and though I made an effort to remember the route, the specifics of the memory have faded away to nothing in the intervening days. Without Vesper’s uncanny knowledge of the arena, anyone pursuing would have caught us at their leisure. Instead, it takes us mere minutes to navigate the hallways and find a door leading out into the street. We’re not safe—not by a long shot—but I breathe easier as we put some distance between us and the arena of Wands at our back.

“Which way?” Cato looks around. I follow his gaze. The streets are empty for now, but surely that won’t hold true once the thousands of Wands start filtering out into the night. They aren’t supposed to touch us, but it doesn’t matter what’s supposed to happen. Who would even enforce it? The watchers, reporting on the events of the Trials? Surely they’re Wands in this district. A couple of extra dead champions would finish the Trials tonight, and surely no one would ask too many questions. I hate that I was naive enough to think the rules would be leveraged against anyone but the champions themselves.

“We need to get out of the Wands District as quickly as possible.” My head is still horribly woozy, but I don’t think I’m in danger of passing out. This time.

Vesper nods. Sweat slicks their face, even though they’ve moved faster and farther in past nights. I clench my fists at my side. There are a lot of reasons to hate the Wands in general, and the court in particular, but they’ve always been uniform figures in my head. The Wands aren’t to be trusted as a whole, like the feral dogs that roam the streets in some neighborhoods. They’re as likely to bite you as show a lick of kindness, and you only need to see someone bitten once in order to take great pains to avoid sharing their fate.

Now, it’s personal. I want Nonnie to hurt. I want them to be miserable. I want to be the cause of their pain and suffering. “Vesper.”

“I’m fine. Give me a second.” They turn and start moving down the street. “We’re not far from the river and a bridge to the Swords District. It won’t necessarily be safer, but the Wands won’t follow.” They glance back at the arena. “If they are going to follow. They’re not supposed to. But they also weren’t supposed to violate a ruling by a Sword.”

“No reason to stick around and find out.” Cato turns in the direction they indicated and starts walking. We barely make it a block before he asks the question I don’t have an answer to. “Kestrel, what the fuck was that? Did you kill the Chariot?”

I shudder at the memory of the heaviness in my palms, at the Chariot’s screams. “I don’t know.”

“Did you know you could do that with your shadows?”

“Obviously she didn’t,” Vesper snaps. “Look at her face. She’s traumatized over the whole thing.”

“I’m right here.” I scrub a hand over my face, trying to focus. “It’s all connected to the shadows. I can walk through them. Maybe I sent the Chariot somewhere else.”

Vesper frowns. “You walk through shadows within eyesight—and without creating any new ones from your palms. This seems like a different power.”

Cato’s already shaking his head. “The source is all the same, just like my light. What changes is how I focus the magic, not the magic itself.”

I stare down at my palms. They look just like they always have, crisscrossed with life lines and love lines and a hundred little branching connections. Scars, too. If my fate is really written in those lines, it’s long since been muddied by a life lived hard.

Pika once convinced me to go down to the old palm reader in the Peridot District by the port. The man was ancient and grizzled to the point I swore he must have been over a hundred years old. He gave us our fortunes for a song—literally. Pika is apparently destined for a long, happy life with a partner and a few kids.

For me, he stared at my palm long enough to have fear dripping down my spine. When he looked up, his faded brown eyes seeming almost milky in the low light, he just curled my fingers back over my palm and said I had a great destiny. No matter how we cajoled, he wouldn’t elaborate, and he ushered us out shortly afterward. I managed to laugh it off at the time, but now I wonder.

Did he see the Chariot’s death in my palm, powered by the Moon’s magic? No wonder he looked at me as if I were one of the monsters, rampaging through the wilds.

“I don’t know if I killed him,” I say softly. “He screamed like he was dying.”

“Maybe.” Cato continues to look around, attention on the doors, the rooftops, the streets intersecting ours. “We won’t know for sure until the banner is unfurled over the Chariot’s temple.”

Another banner, another death at my hands. This one was at a greater distance than the Hermit’s, but that doesn’t make me any less innocent. At least the Hermit died fast.

“There. The bridge.” The relief in Vesper’s voice knocks me back into my body. I can’t afford to be distracted. The fight with the Chariot felt like it lasted forever, but in reality, it was over in minutes. We have the entire night left to survive before sunrise.

The bridge is a simple one, which is downright shocking when it comes to the Minor Court districts. Nothing ornate or ridiculous, just a stretch of stone arching over the rushing water far below. There’s no cover to speak of, but we should be able to make it across quickly.

It’s a simple hope, and a false one.

“Stop right there.”

Cato curses and spins, sweeping me and Vesper behind him in a smooth movement. I expect to find the Wands, but the pair who step from the shadows are even worse.

Death. The Tower.

This is bad. The Chariot is dead—probably—and if they’re here, that means the Magician is also dead. I have no idea where the Star and the High Priestess have gone to now that we killed—maybe—their ally, but they’re not here. Only two more people need to die to close the Trials out.